Life in Cowtown

It’s hard to describe just how much tomatoes love their self-watering containers, but these photos speak for themselves:

They went from this:

To this:

To the great outdoors:

Where they grew:

And became monsters: (notice no more window, they’re easily six feet tall)

And finally, finally weeks after they were expected they produced actual REAL tomatoes:

This has been a very trying year for many gardeners and farmers. From late blight in many areas to a very late start to the season up north, from late thaws to a cold and windy and rainy summer, it seems like everything was stacked against poor crops this year. Probably this is, because I started a garden. But I’ve taken a look at many a friends’ garden patch to see how their ‘maters are doing, and after doing that I’m especially impressed by mine.

Most tomatoes around here hover around two feet tall, with a few tomatoes on each plant. This is owing to poor clayey soil, insufficient water, chilly nights and a short season, but my plants have persevered and are easily the tallest I’ve seen outside the greenhouse.  They started producing quite late, due to a cold summer, but if there’s any hope of a warm September, I may even see a few of them ripen. Here’s hoping!

It’s hard to believe that a small tray of seedlings grew into this three foot tall forest.

Brand new 'maters

All the tomatoes love the maxi-kaps so much, that they just sprawled into lush bushy plants with thick stems and huge leaves.

They’ve survived our brutally frigid summer start and evening lows of 8 (which we still have).

All the leaves on the different varieties are different. From the broad velvety leaves of the Brandywines:

Brandywine... I think

To the lacy fern-like fronds of Ildi:

Totally different leaves

There are no tomatoes yet, but my knowledgeable friends are telling me it’s only a matter of days now.

I assume those'll be cherry tomatoes

I’ll do a tomato dance in my spare time.

In other news – I harvested my first zucchini yesterday, and I’ll be having some photos tomorrow.

Note the supervisor in the window

In an impressive display of proactiveness and organizational skills,  I finally, three weeks later than planned, put the tomatoes in their final home. The containers I purchased to do this are nothing less than Calgary’s answer to the infamous Earthbox, the much less famous Maxi-kap. Designed by a Dutch company the Maxi-kap is exclusively produced by Garden Retreat garden centre, although a couple of other stores in Calgary carry it. The idea is about the same as the Earthbox – a self watering, self feeding container that has several advantages over regular container gardening.

First any container grown vegetable will be weed free. And until you’ve spent your afternoon weeding, you have no idea just how appealing that is. Secondly, it’s self-watering. Since some plants, tomatoes in particular are heavy drinkers this will eliminate daily watering.  A light container will not overheat the roots of the plants requiring even more watering, the containers are very space efficient fitting three tomatoes and two cucumbers per box, and of course they are reasonably mobile allowing you a bit more leeway as far as placement.

They’re not all sun and roses though. I’ve seen some of the disadvantages first hand, my primary concern being tomato cages. More specifically the lack thereof. Since the containers are Styrofoam, you can’t exactly attach one to the side or on top without wrecking the box. One local gardener simply inserted the cages into the soil of the box, but mine promptly fell over when the slightest breeze blew, threatening to topple the plants in the process.

Secondly, the containers themselves should probably be on a platform of some sort, say one with wheels. The Earthbox has optional casters, as well as tomato cages that attach to the sides of the plastic box, plastic obviously being much more appropriate to the task. There are pretty cedar boxes on wheels that are sold separately for the maxi-kap, but at roughly a hundred dollars each, they ain’t cheap. If I get motivated I’ll build just a simple plywood platform and screw little wheels onto it. But that’s in the future – I’m nothing if not lazy.

The planting was easy enough:

Open the box and insert plastic liner inside.

Replace the lid and drop a cute water level ball into the watering hole.

Place bag of soil on top of the lid.

Reading that tomatoes do really well with a red mulch, I added a layer of that as well. We’ll see if it helps.

Cut holes out for the plants.

Root around the bottom of the bag of dirt and cut an X at the bottom of the bag over each planting hole.

Push the earth from the bag into each hole, make sure it’s packed reasonably well. You don’t want air pockets or they will prevent the water from reaching the roots.

Plant a tomato plant in each space. Get dirt all over you – it’s fun. Try not to destroy the tomato roots as you go.

Ta-da! Admire your handywork. Lament the lack of cages. Tell yourself you have a few days to rig something up. Pray the tomatoes do well.

My tomatoes didn’t get a chance to get hardened off properly. Between me being at work and not being able to babysit them, and the winds and the snow eliminating two weekends, they got perhaps three days of life in the shade outside before moving out. I know sun can burn delicate leaves that have never felt it unfiltered, and prepared some shade cloth to cover them (somehow?) if necessary, but for once the gods of weather were on my side. It’s been overcast yesterday and today in Calgary, with moderate temperatures, the odd drizzle but no harsh sun or overwhelming wind. If this keeps up for just a few more days, they should have an easier transition. Here’s hoping.